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(CNN)NFL running back Mike James calls it his medicine for pain management, but league officials call it a banned substance. Now, James’ athletic career is hanging in limbo because he chose pot over pills.

“I never had something where I could be coherent and still have pain relief,” he said.

He turned to the sport that both he and his mother loved to help overcome his grief. “For him to be all right and mentally deal with this, he was going to lean on football,” said his wife, Aubrey James.

Three years later, James was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As a Bleacher Report headline put it, James proved that he had the talent to enjoy a “promising future” with the Buccaneers, but then he injured his ankle, and his life changed.

Doctors prescribed a cocktail of opiates to deal with the pain, a common prescription among professional athletes for sports-related injuries.

A study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 2011 found that more than half — 52% — of former NFL players reported using opioids during their career, and 71% of those players reported misusing opioids.

The prevalence of current opioid use among those players was 7%, according to that study: about three times the rate of use among the general population. The study included 644 retired players who answered questions in a telephone survey about their opioid use.

James never worried about developing an opioid addiction, “because I was getting them from a doctor,” he said, but Aubrey worried.

Within weeks of his injury, James joined the about 2.5 million Americans who struggle with opioid use disorder.

In an effort to help him stop using pills, his wife suggested that James use pot to treat his pain.

James, a 27-year-old father of two, knew that he needed to stop using opioids whenever he thought about “the notion that I would do what my father did to me, to my boys,” he said. His sons are 4 and 1.

He remained skeptical, however, about using marijuana to make that change.

“I thought, ‘Weed? No, that’s a street drug.’ I didn’t even want to hear what it had to offer,” he said, but after more convincing, he finally tried marijuana in February 2014, and it helped him get off the opioids.

“I felt like I was beginning a new life,” he said.

Yet since cannabis is banned in the NFL and James was unsure how he could get more, he said, he didn’t use it again until last year.

Goodell addresses NFL ban on marijuana use

Then, in August, James took a drug test as part of the NFL’s routine testing program. In October, he learned that the test was positive for marijuana, leading to his filing of the therapeutic use exemption for cannabis.

“This is the first active player who’s been willing to put their professional career on the line, to openly admit that they not only have been using this cannabis but need it to function at the highest level,” said Dr. Sue Sisley, an Arizona-based physician who is a board member of the nonprofit Doctors for Cannabis Regulation and has been helping James with his exemption application.

“Mike’s case is such a perfect example of why cannabis needs to be made available, because he’s really not a candidate for opioids,” she said. “So this is a safe alternative for him.”

‘I’m not ashamed of it. … I have a life to live’

Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico have approved some form of legalized cannabis. The first state in the US to legalize marijuana for medicinal use was California, in 1996.

As it turns out, 69% of Americans say they approve of a professional athlete using marijuana for pain, and 67% saythat using a doctor’s prescription for an opioid is a greater health risk than using a doctor’s prescription for marijuana, according to a Yahoo News/Marist Poll released last year.

The stance of the NFL remains somewhat unclear, and the league did not respond to a request for comment.

“Our job is to find the best medical science to support your therapeutic use exemption,” DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association, told Gupta.

As for James’ case, “what I would say to him and every NFL player: Our job is to figure out, how do we build the best medical support for the best treatment for you?” Smith said.

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James never would have guessed that he would make history due to a therapeutic use exemption, but if, 30 years from now, his biography states “medicinal marijuana advocate,” he would be fine with that.

“I’m not ashamed of it,” James said. “I’m not embarrassed about it. It is something that I will continue to use, because I have a life to live.”

(CNN)In 2016, opioids killed more Americans than breast cancer. The drug overdose epidemic has become one of the most concerning public health issues of recent time, and in an effort to stem the tide, moreg and more patients and doctors are turning to pot over pills.

For much of the past two decades, 51-year-old Angie Slinkertook a cocktail of narcotics, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications to manage the pain stemming from a car accident in 1998. She had between 50 and 60 surgeries, but her pain persisted, and doctors kept giving her more pills.

“It was just a vicious cycle,” she told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “You started taking something for pain, and before you knew it, you were into another surgery. Which brought on anxiety.” To treat the anxiety, doctors prescribed more pills. And when she felt depressed, they added even more medications.

All the drugs left in her a fog. She spent most of her days in bed. When Slinker woke up, she was in pain and looking for immediate relief.

By 2012, she was taking up to 25 pills a day. She weighed close to 350 pounds, and she didn’t want to move, because the medications sapped whatever will or desire she had. “I can’t do this anymore. It is killing me from the inside out,” she told her doctors.

And so she stopped cold turkey.

The withdrawal symptoms were severe. Slinker said she was moody and irritable from the pounding headaches and constant nausea. Without any medications, her hands began to spasm and freeze.

Her then 22 year-old sonsuggested cannabis. The relief was quick. “I realized immediately that there are medicinal properties within cannabis,” she said.

It didn’t completely eliminate her pain, but pot allowed her to live again, she says. She was able to play with her granddaughter and participate in life. “I’m never going to be pain-free, ever. But cannabis has given me a reason to live,” Slinker said.

But it is also illegal in her home state of Indiana. “I could have bought cannabis off the street. But that was not me. I wanted to do it the right way. I wanted to do it legally,” she said. So in July 2012, Slinker moved to Maine.

Treating patients with weed

Medical marijuana has been legal in Maine since 1999. The state has one of the top ten highest rates of opioid overdose in the country. In 2016, the rate of overdoses from opioid drugs in Maine was nearly double the national rate. The number of heroin related deaths has jumped more than fourfold since 2012.

This is your brain on pain

For a state deeply embedded in the opioid crisis, Dustin Sulak believes that medical marijuana could be part of a solution. “There’s no pill, there’s no spray, no drop, no puff [that] can completely solve this problem,” Sulak told Gupta. “But cannabis, when it’s used in the right way, can take a big bite out of it.”

Sulak is a doctor of osteopathic medicine. He says he has treated hundreds of people with marijuana to wean them off opioid painkillers. He runs two outpatient clinics in Maine and started looking to marijuana as a potential solution when he noticed that a number of his patients were able to sustain their opioid dosages for years, never asking for more.

Production of natural opioids is triggered when the body experiences pain. But opioid medications can act as a signal to the body to stop producing endorphins; it instead becomes more and more reliant on the drugs. When the person takes more opioids, that increases the risk for overdose.

Sulak was curious as to why some of his patients didn’t need to increase their opioid doses, so he asked them what was different. “The answer was that they were using opioids in combination with cannabis. And they felt that it made the opioids stronger.”

Sulak’s review of the medical literature resulted in the same conclusion. He points out that when opioids are used in combination with cannabis in animals, marijuana can boost an opioid’s effectiveness without requiring higher dosages.

Slinker is now a patient of Sulak’s integrative health practice. Instead of taking 25 pills a day, she supplements smoking a gram of marijuana every three or four weeks with marijuana tinctures, oils and vapor. She also uses a drug called naltrexone to help with her autoimmune-related issues.

She credits her life now to cannabis and wants others to know about it. “I want people to know that they have options. Do not be afraid to tell your doctor that you do not want these chemicals in your body,” she said.

‘I don’t think I would be alive today if I didn’t have it’

Doug Campbell, another patient of Sulak’s, agrees that cannabis is a real alternative. “I don’t think I would be alive today if I didn’t have it,” he said.

Like Slinker, Campbell said he started off using narcotics to manage pain. He was 18 years-old when he fell off a roof and fractured three vertebrae in his lower back. But it wasn’t until he started getting involved in a more party lifestyle that opioids became more than just therapy.

After 32 times in and out of rehabilitation, he finally found a way to stop using opioids. “I have no cravings. I have no desire. I do not have any thought about it at all,” he told Gupta.

Dr. Mark Wallace, a pain management specialist and head of the University of California, San Diego Health’s Center for Pain Medicine, is seeing similar results in his patients. Wallace began investigating cannabis in 1999, when he received a grant from the state of California. He looked at the literature and realized that pot had a long history of therapeutic use for many disorders including leprosy, epilepsy and pain.

Within a decade, there were enough studies to convince him that marijuana was a real alternative to use in his practice. He estimates that hundreds of his patients, like Marc Schechter, have been weaned off pills through pot.

40,000 pills over 10 years

In the past 10 years, Schechter estimates, he took almost 40,000 opioid pills, all prescribed to him by his doctors. Percocet, fentanyl and OxyContin — they all worked, but when the dosage wore off, he needed more.

Schechter had a rare condition that flared up while he was playing golf in 2007. At the 17th hole, pain began radiating from his back. By the time he got back to his room, he couldn’t move his left leg at all.

Schechter was diagnosed with idiopathic transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spine. He was eventually able to walk again, but the pain persisted.

Without the drugs, it felt like his leg was burning with pins and needles, as if it had fallen asleep. “It’s like that 24/7. Not a second of relief,” he said. He needed the drugs just to live.

“Were you addicted to them?” Gupta asked.

“Physically, yeah,” Schechter said.

The drugs never interfered with his work as an attorney, but Schechter kept needing more and more of them. He started to question their effectiveness. Schechter told his neurologist, “I really am starting to doubt whether this is even having any effect because I’m in so much neuropathic pain.”

His neurologist had heard of Wallace’s work and referred Schechter to the clinic. The first night Schechter used marijuana, he took a puff or two from a vaporizer. “Within a minute, I had immediate pain relief. … [The pain level] was so tolerable that I was, like, in heaven.”

‘We need objective data’

Patients and doctors across the country have told similar stories. But Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said anecdotes are not enough.

I feel obligated to share the results of my five-year-long investigation into the medical benefits of the cannabis plant. Before I started this worldwide, in-depth investigation, I was not particularly impressed by the results of medical marijuana research, but a few years later, as I started to dedicate time with patients and scientists in various countries, I came to a different conclusion.

Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works. I changed my mind, and I am certain you can, as well. It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally. I realize this is an unconventional way to reach you, but your office declined numerous requests for an interview, and as a journalist, a doctor and a citizen, I felt it imperative to make sure you had access to our findings.

Mr. Sessions, there is an added urgency, as we are in the middle of a deadly opioid epidemic that has been described as the worst self-inflicted epidemic in the history of our country.

The drug overdose scourge claimed about 68,000 US lives in 2017, just over 45,000 of them from opioids alone. Every day, 115 Americans die from opioid overdoses. It has fueled a decline in an entire country’s life expectancy and will be remembered as a sad and tragic chapter in our collective history.

These are desperate times, and while some may consider making medical marijuana widely available to be a desperate measure, the evidence has become increasingly clear of the important role cannabis can have.

We have seen real-world clues of medical marijuana’s benefits. Researchers from the Rand Corp., supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, conducted “the most detailed examination of medical marijuana and opioid deaths to date” and found something few initially expected. The analysis showed an approximately 20% decline in opioid overdose deaths between 1999 and 2010 in states with legalized medical marijuana and functioning dispensaries.

It’s not the first time this association between medical marijuana and opioid overdose has been found. Though it is too early to draw a cause-effect relationship, these data suggest that medicinal marijuana could save up to 10,000 lives every year.

The science of weed

Cannabis and its compounds show potential to save lives in three important ways.

Cannabis can help treat pain, reducing the initial need for opioids. Cannabis is also effective at easing opioid withdrawal symptoms, much like it does for cancer patients, ill from chemotherapy side effects. Finally, and perhaps most important, the compounds found in cannabis can heal the diseased addict’s brain, helping them break the cycle of addiction.

Mr. Sessions, there is no other known substance that can accomplish all this. If we had to start from scratch and design a medicine to help lead us out of the opioid epidemic, it would likely look very much like cannabis.

A better, and safer, way to treat pain

The consensus is clear: Cannabis can effectively treat pain. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine arrived at this conclusion last year after what it described as the “most comprehensive studies of recent research” on the health effects of cannabis.

Furthermore, opioids target the breathing centers in the brain, putting their users at real risk of dying from overdose. In stark contrast, with cannabis, there is virtually no risk of overdose or sudden death. Even more remarkable, cannabis treats pain in a way opioids cannot. Though both drugs target receptors that interfere with pain signals to the brain, cannabis does something more: It targets another receptor that decreases inflammation — and does it fast.

I have seen this firsthand. All over the country, I have met patients who have weaned themselves off opioids using cannabis. Ten years ago, attorney Marc Schechter developed a sudden painful condition known as transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. After visiting doctors in several states, he was prescribed opioids and, according to our calculations, consumed approximately 40,000 pills over the next decade. Despite that, his pain scores remained an eight out of 10. He also suffered significant side effects from the pain medication, including nausea, lethargy and depression.

Desperate and out of options, Schechter saw Dr. Mark Wallace, head of University of California, San Diego Health’s Center for Pain Medicine, where he was recommended cannabis. Minutes after he took it for the first time, Schechter’s pain was reduced to a score of two out of 10, with hardly any side effects. One dose of cannabis had provided relief that 40,000 pills over 10 years could not.

Using marijuana to get off opioids

For Schechter, as with so many others, the seemingly insurmountable barrier to ending his opioid use was the terrible withdrawal symptoms he suffered each time he tried. When a patient stops opioids, their pain is often magnified, accompanied by rapid heart rate, persistent nausea and vomiting, excessive sweating, anorexia and terrible anxiety.

Here again, cannabis is proven to offer relief. As many know, there is longstanding evidence that cannabis helps chemotherapy-induced symptoms in cancer patients, and those symptoms are very similar to opioid withdrawal. In fact, for some patients, cannabis is the only agent that subdues nausea while increasing appetite.

Why we can’t ‘just say no’ to opioids

Finally, when someone is addicted to opioids, they are often described as having a brain disease. Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai in New York City, showed me what this looks like in autopsy specimens of those who had overdosed on opioids. Within the prefrontal cortex of the brain, she found damage to the glutamatergic system, which makes it difficult for neural signals to be transmitted. This is an area of the brain responsible for judgment, decision-making, learning and memory.

Hurd told me that when an individual’s brain is “fundamentally changed” and diseased in this manner, they lose the ability to regulate opioid consumption, unable to quit despite their best efforts — unable to “just say no.”

It is no surprise, then, that abstinence-only programs have pitiful results when it comes to opioid addiction. Even the current gold standard of medication-assisted treatment, which is far more effective, still relies on less-addictive opioids such as methadone and buprenorphine. That continued opioid use, Hurd worries, can cause ongoing disruption to the glutamatergic system, never allowing the brain to fully heal. It may help explain the tragic tales of those who succeed in stopping opioids for a short time, only to relapse again and again.

Your brain on marijuana

This is precisely why Hurd started to look to other substances to help and settled on nonpsychoactive cannabidiol or CBD, one of the primary components in cannabis. Hurd and her team discovered that CBD actually helped “restructure and normalize” the brain at the “cellular level, at the molecular level.” It was CBD that healed the glutamatergic system and improved the workings of the brain’s frontal lobes.

This new science sheds lights on stories like the one I heard from Doug Campbell of Yarmouth, Maine. He told me he had been in and out of drug rehab 32 times over 25 years, with no success. But soon after starting cannabis, he no longer has “craving, desire and has not thought about (opioids) at all, period.”

For the past 40 years, we have been told that cannabis turns the brain into a fried egg, and now there is scientific evidence that it can do just the opposite, as it did for Campbell. It can heal the brain when nothing else does.

I know it sounds too good to be true. I initially thought so, as well. Make no mistake, though: Marc Schechter and Doug Campbell are emblematic of thousands of patients who have successfully traded their pills for a plant.

These patients often live in the shadows, afraid to come forward to share their stories. They fear stigma. They fear prosecution. They fear that someone will take away what they believe is a lifesaving medication.

Where do we go from here?

Mr. Sessions, Dr. Mark Wallace has invited you to spend a day seeing these patients in his San Diego clinic and witness their outcomes for yourself. Dr. Dustin Sulak could do the same for you in Portland, Maine, as could Dr. Sue Sisley in Phoenix. Staci Gruber in Boston could show you the brain scans of those who tried cannabis for the first time and were then able to quit opioids. Dr. Julie Holland in New York City could walk you through the latest research. All over the country, you will find the scientists who write the books and papers, advance the science and grow our collective knowledge. These are the women and men to whom you should listen. They are the ones, free of rhetoric and conjecture, full of facts and truth, who are our best chance at halting the deadly opioid epidemic.

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Making medicinal marijuana available should come with certain obligations and mandates, just as with any other medicine. It should be regulated to ensure its safety, free of contamination and consistent in dosing. It should be kept out of the hands of children, pregnant women and those who are at risk for worse side effects. Any responsible person wants to make sure this is a medicine that helps people, not harms.

Recently, your fellow conservative John Boehner changed his mind after being “unalterably opposed” to marijuana in the past. If you do the same, Mr. Attorney General, thousands of lives could be improved and saved. There is no time to lose.

A 13-person expert panel unanimously recommended the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve a new drug derived from cannabis as a treatment for two severe and rare types of childhood epilepsy, making drugs containing cannabinoids (CBD) one step closer to federal approval.

If the FDA follows the group’s recommendation, UK-based GW Pharmaceuticals’ syrup will be the first drug made from cannabis to win federal approval.

The recommendation comes after the company presented to an independent panel of experts a three-phase series of clinical trials showing the experimental medication – which does not get the user high – significantly reduced seizures in children with severe and early-onset forms of epilepsy. Both Lennox-Gastaut (LGS) and Dravet syndromes begin in infancy and cause sudden stiffening of the body, arms, and legs. More than 90 percent of patients with LGS or Dravet Syndrom have multiple seizures a day, according to GW Pharmaceuticals.

It’s not clear how the medicine, Epidioleax, reduces seizures, but a briefing document published April 19 suggests CBD is “clinically meaningful and statistically significant” in doing so. The company advises parents to monitor children for potential liver damage and lists common side effects as diarrhea, fatigue, vomiting, and sleep problems. In the report, the drugmakers concluded CBD has a negligible abuse potential.

More than two dozen states allow medical marijuana, but federal approval has not been granted for any medical use. Despite its prohibition, some parents have been using cannabidiol, or CBD oil, to treat children with the condition. CBD is one of more than 100 chemicals found in the cannabis plant. It doesn’t contain the psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) ingredient. Earlier this year, a 36-study review confirmed evidence for the effectiveness of cannabinoids in managing epileptic seizures, showing consistent evidence that compounds from cannabis “often reduce the average frequency of epileptic seizures” where conventional drugs have failed.

As much as 10 percent of the world’s population live with active seizures, according to the Epilepsy Foundation, 60 percent of whom don’t know the cause.

A decision is expected from FDA regulators by the end of June. If approved, Epidiolex would be available for prescription in child patients two years and older with hard-to-treat forms of epilepsy. Doctors could have the option to prescribe the oil for other uses, potentially spurring new pharmaceutical research and interest in other cannabis-based products.

The kicker, as always, is the price. The company declined to comment on the price of the drug, reports USA Today. The publication says Wall Street analysts estimate it could cost more than $25,000 per year.

Want to know how high you are? There’s an app for that. Or rather, there could be very soon.

While it is now perfectly legal to light up a spliff in nine US states (29 if you count medical marijuana), there is no accurate way to tell how stoned a person is. A drunk driver can be assessed with a breathalyzer but for several reasons, a similar device cannot be used to test for marijuana intoxication.

So instead, the government is funding the development of an app, which they’ve simply called Am I Stoned?

Right now, it is just a prototype and there are still a few glitches to figure out (more on that later) but the results so far have been promising.

The app has been designed to work out how high a user is based on their performance on a series of digital tasks that can be completed on mobile or desktop. The tasks test the user on their cognitive speed, reaction time, fine motor ability, and memory, which the app then compares to the user’s baseline (created when they weren’t high).

In a double-blind study, researchers tested both the mobile and desktop versions on 24 volunteers. Some had been given a placebo, others a mild dose (7.5 milligrams) of THC, the psychoactive compound found in cannabis, and the rest were given a higher dose of THC (15 milligrams).

The results were not perfect. The mobile app was able to accurately assess whether the user was impaired in just one of the four tasks. The desktop version did a little better and correctly predicted whether or not a user was high in three of the four tasks.

“The effects of THC on performance may be subtle, so we need highly sensitive tasks to detect impairments,” explained Elisa Pabon, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago who presented the results at the American Society for Pharmacology and Therapeutics on Tuesday.

“It is likely that the computer tasks, which took 15 to 20 minutes to complete, were more sensitive to THC impairment because they provided more opportunity to detect a drug effect.”

Aside from the obvious, there are a few other issues the researchers need to smooth out. For example, there are certain effects of marijuana, including vigilance and judgment planning, that are not currently being tested for and which would help the app accurately assess how high the user is. It also does not consider the fact that with a little practice a user could improve their performance over time and outsmart the app.

For now, it seems, the users themselves might be the best measure of how stoned they really are. The study found that users were “generally aware” of whether they were high or not.

Behold, we’ve got a BBQ Becky 2.0! An Oakland woman named Alison Ettel recently called the police on an eight-year-old girl who was selling water bottles outside of her apartment building on the grounds of her “not having a permit.” The internet immediately jumped all over the situation as a golden meme opportunity when it was released that Ettel is the CEO of a medical marijuana company for dogs. The most hilariously ironic detail of the whole situation is that she has reportedly been operating her business without the proper permit herself.

Trump Backs State-Level Marijuana Regulation, Lifting Pot Stocks

President Donald Trump endorsed letting states decide how to regulate marijuana, in a major boost for the legal pot industry.

Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner said that as a result of Trump’s assurances, he’ll end a blockade of Justice Department nominees. Gardner held up the nominees after Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an earlier Justice Department memo that shielded marijuana operations in states like Colorado from enforcement of the federal ban on the drug.

"Since the campaign, President Trump has consistently supported states’ rights to decide for themselves how best to approach marijuana," Gardner said in a statement Friday. “President Trump has assured me that he will support a federalism-based legislative solution to fix this states’ rights issue once and for all.”

“The president did speak with Senator Gardner yesterday and again today,” Sanders told reporters Friday at the White House, adding, "the president is a firm believer" in states’ rights.

Marijuana is legal for medicinal use in 29 states and for recreational use in eight.

Marijuana stocks surged on the news, which removed the threat posed by Sessions’s decision in January to rescind an Obama-era policy that helped states legalize recreational pot.

Canada’s Canopy Growth Corp., the largest cannabis producer by market value, jumped as much as 11 percent in its biggest intraday advance since March 5. Medical-marijuana supplier Aphria Inc. climbed as much as 21 percent in Toronto trading.

Gardner said he’s lifting his hold and working with colleagues on legislation that would protect marijuana operations in states that have legalized the drug. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump offered qualified support for legalization while on the presidential campaign trail, saying that medical marijuana “should happen” and that laws regarding recreational usage should be left in the hands of the states.

Sessions, on the other hand, has been an outspoken opponent of state marijuana laws.

The Justice Department under President Barack Obama created guardrails for federal prosecution of the sale and possession of cannabis, which remains illegal under federal law, and allowed legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country. Under Sessions’s approach, U.S. attorneys in states where pot is legal were given approval to prosecute cases where they see fit.

(CNN)Oklahomans voted in favor of legalizing medicinal marijuana Tuesday, with 56.8% approving the measure,according to unofficial results with 99.6% of precincts reporting.

The results in Oklahoma are unofficial, but Gov. Mary Fallin issued a statement Tuesday night.

“I respect the will of the voters in any question placed before them to determine the direction of our state,” she said. “It is our responsibility as state leaders to look out for the health and safety of Oklahoma citizens.”

“As I mentioned in previous public comments, I believe, as well as many Oklahomans, this new law is written so loosely that it opens the door for basically recreational marijuana. I will be discussing with legislative leaders and state agencies our options going forward on how best to proceed with adding a medical and proper regulatory framework to make sure marijuana use is truly for valid medical illnesses,” she said in a statement Tuesday after the vote.

(CNN)The US Food and Drug Administration approved a cannabis-based drug for the first time, the agency said Monday.

Epidiolex was recommended for approval by an advisory committee in April, and the agency had until this week to make a decision.

The twice-daily oral solution is approved for use in patients 2 and older to treat two types of epileptic syndromes: Dravet syndrome, a rare genetic dysfunction of the brain that begins in the first year of life, and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a form of epilepsy with multiple types of seizures that begin in early childhood, usually between 3 and 5.

“This is an important medical advance,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement Monday. “Because of the adequate and well-controlled clinical studies that supported this approval, prescribers can have confidence in the drug’s uniform strength and consistent delivery.”

The drug is the “first pharmaceutical formulation of highly-purified, plant-based cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabinoid lacking the high associated with marijuana, and the first in a new category of anti-epileptic drugs,” according to a statement Monday from GW Pharmaceuticals, the UK-based biopharmaceutical company that makes Epidiolex.

Cannabidiol is one of more than 80 active cannabinoid chemicals, yet unlike tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, it does not produce a high.

The FDA has approved synthetic versions of some cannabinoid chemicals found in the marijuana plant for other purposes, including cancer pain relief.

Justin Gover, chief executive officer of GW Pharmaceuticals, described the approval in the statement as “a historic milestone.” He added that the drug offers families “the first and only FDA-approved cannabidiol medicine to treat two severe, childhood-onset epilepsies.”

“These patients deserve and will soon have access to a cannabinoid medicine that has been thoroughly studied in clinical trials, manufactured to assure quality and consistency, and available by prescription under a physician’s care,” Gover said.

Epidiolex will become available in the fall, Gover told CNN. He would not give any information on cost, saying only that it will be discussed with insurance companies and announced later.

With Epidiolex meeting FDA standards, the drug will “finally be made available to the thousands that may benefit from it,” he said.

It’s an option for those patients who have not responded to other treatments to control seizures.According to the Epilepsy Foundation, up to one-third of Americans who have epilepsy have found no therapies that will control their seizures.

Shauna Garris, a pharmacist, pharmacy clinical specialist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of North Carolina’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy, said the drug is effective and works somewhere between “fairly” and “very well.” She has not used Epidiolex in her own clinical practice and was not involved in the development of the drug but said she’s not sure it will live up to “all of the hype” that has surrounded it.

There are side effects, the most common being sleepiness, Gover said. But Garris highlighted that many of the side effects occur when it is taken with other medications, which she said is a concern because most patients are on other medications.

There are likely to be drug interactions, she said, but “that’s not uncommon for antiepileptic medications,” and she noted that this could affect the effectiveness of the medication.

The European Medical Society is also considering approval of Epidiolex and is expected to announce a decision in the first quarter of next year, according to Gover.

A phase three clinical trial is underway for a third seizure-related condition called tuberous sclerosis complex, which begins in infancy and causes a sudden stiffening of the body, arms and legs, with the head bent forward. Glover said that if the results are positive, his company will apply for supplemental approval for this condition.

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In the meantime, it is possible that once on the market, Epidiolex could be prescribed for conditions other than the ones it’s approved for. This is called off-label use and is a common practice with many medications.

As part of the FDA’s review of the medication, the potential for abuse was assessed and found to be low to negative, according to Gover.

Still, this approval comes as the White House is said to be reconsidering federal prohibition of marijuana and as more and more states approve it for recreational and medicinal use.

Gover said the approval signals “validation of the science of cannabinoid medication.”

Veterans to Farmers, a farming nonprofit, is helping veterans reintegrate into civilian life, connect with fellow vets and recover from PTSD, by training them to work in agriculture.

DENVER – An average of 20 veterans commit suicide each year—a statistic that weighs on the mind of Rich Murphy.

Murphy, 38, is executive director of Veterans to Farmers, an organization he joined after suffering a devastating injury and bout with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in December 2007. Murphy, who had escaped injury during a five-year deployment as a corporal with the U.S. Air Force, was struck in his car at 70 mph by a driver who had fallen asleep at the wheel, leaving him with a horrible back injury.

“One of the number one reactions to PTSD is isolation. People just withdraw, out of fear or that they don’t fit in,” Murphy said. “I had a guy who did the program last year, his wife came up to me and gave me a hug and said, ‘thank you, he hasn’t left the house since winter.’ [Veterans to Farmers] is just opening the doorway for these men and women.”

After his accident, Murphy quit nursing school and found employment as a social worker. It was during a stint working for the City of Denver when he met veterans who he wished had gotten the care and intervention they needed much sooner.

A Marine Corps veteran by the name of Buck Adams had formed Veterans to Farmers in 2013 and Murphy met him in the fall of that year after his wife became aware of the program. The following year, Murphy began to develop a curriculum for the VTF training program. He also crisscrossed Colorado, telling everyone about the nascent nonprofit’s merits, and forging partnerships with Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University.

In 2017, after he’d spent many hours as an instructor, Murphy took over as executive director of the organization when Buck stepped down.

Murphy recalled a full circle moment: During the first two years of VTF, his veteran farmers sold fresh produce they’d grown to his previous clients at the Denver Human Services building—thanks to a grant that Denver Botanic Garden received to set up a food stand in the building.

VTF aims to fill the void between veterans’ skills and the more lackluster jobs the economy produces by training them to work in agriculture. As he explains it, there are also less tangible benefits.

“When you get ten veterans in a greenhouse or out in the field and they start working on plants together, digging in the soil and growing things, you see therapy happen,” he said, noting that traditional therapy is more of taboo word in the military.

Murphy gave Fox News a full tour of Rebel Farm, a hydroponic greenhouse where hundreds of pounds of greens and herbs are grown and harvested each month by former service members. The persistent hum of fans and the sound of rock music filled the temperature-controlled, 15,000-square-foot space. Fellow veterans dutifully checked on the health of kale, arugula and Bok choy that will be harvested and sold primarily to restaurants.

“Eight weeks later, you have ten veterans that are all new friends who never would’ve talked to each other had they not been put in a space together. That’s the process,” Murphy, whose father, uncle and grandparents also served in the military, said. “We see a lot of veterans maintain those friendships afterwards.”

Vets who participated in the program talked about the significance of its impact.

Fresh greens and herbs tended and grown by U.S. military vets at Rebel Farm in Denver, Colorado. (Christopher Carbone/Fox News)

“Students form a bond very quickly,” Tara O’Brien, a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force who took the hydroponics course last year and is taking the soil course this year, told Fox News.

O’Brien, 41, said the type of teamwork and problem-solving skills that come naturally to military veterans are ideal for the country’s food production system, which is undergoing a transformation as consumers demand healthier options and the availability of organic produce increases.

“This bond is what we need among the farming community because it’s a unification of strategy and building something great together that far surpasses the need for competition and secrecy,” O’Brien, who traveled to over 30 countries during her time in the military, told Fox News. “To the core, these men and women are helpers and magnificent leaders and problem solvers—we need this in our food system.”

Marine Corps veteran Dominic Muranyi came across Veterans to Farmers after being unable to enroll in a booked up horticulture course at a community college in Fort Collins.

Muranyi took both courses, finding them to be “immeasurably helpful,” and he’s been working on Murphy’s family farm in Fort Collins, helping out with labor and miscellaneous—including the planned build out of Murphy’s new greenhouse this summer.

“I was able to connect with some really awesome individuals who are all working toward something similar. You meet so many other veterans who have skill sets and knowledge you didn’t even know existed, then come to find out you need to know it!” Muranyi, 27, told Fox News.

The Marine Corps veteran, who’s known as the “quiet one” of the vets who have taken the courses, has been studying mycology (fungi). He likened the Veterans to Farmers experience to how some civilians may think about the military.

“When you are in the military, no one back home thinks, ‘Oh, I get to go to the movies, better thank a veteran.’ We do our job in silent professionalism and take comfort knowing it makes a difference,” Muranyi, who deployed to Cuba and Japan during his service, explained.

“It’s kind of the same thing as a farmer: How often do you go to the grocery store and look at what farm produced your food? But everyone is grateful to have something to eat. Instead of defending life, we provide life-sustaining food,” he said.

The Veterans to Farmers’ hydroponics course has been taught for the last three years at Rebel Farm’s sprawling greenhouse in southwest Denver, which is owned by Lauren Brettschneider and Jack Olson. During the course, which takes place four times a year and runs for eight weeks, veterans learn the ins and outs of controlled agriculture.

“Farming can be very soothing. You are growing something, creating,” said Brettschneider, who worked in the hospitality and telecom industries before turning her passion for farming into a business. “The class really inspires and motivates [the veterans].”

“How often do you go to the grocery store and look at what farm produced your food? But everyone is grateful to have something to eat. Instead of defending life, we provide life-sustaining food.”

– Dominik Muranyi, a Veterans to Farmers graduate

The seedlings are housed in tiny sponge-like cubes to preserve their structural integrity—but they live inside nutrient film technique (NTF) channels, which are long, white plastic tubes that sort of look like gutters on a house. There’s a little drip with a small hose that exposes the roots to oxygen and they’re able to absorb nutrients from the water. The entire system uses very little water and, because it’s indoors, the plants aren’t subjected to the elements and are less likely to have major pest infestations.

According to Murphy, the greenhouse is much easier on the environment in terms of water usage, a real concern during Denver’s dry, hot summers. It takes approximately 10 gallons of water to produce a head of lettuce outdoors, but inside the greenhouse it takes just one gallon.

Veterans who take the course at Denver Botanic Gardens’ Chatfield Farms work in a 7.5-acre, picture-perfect space with the Rocky Mountains as their backdrop and the bright, powerful Western sun as their balm while they learn everything about the day-to-day operation of an organic farm—planting, harvesting, crop rotations as well as licensing, recordkeeping, marketing and selling. This class runs for 10 weeks and there are only two per year due to Denver’s 22-week outdoor growing season.

On a sun-kissed, windy day in late April, two landscaped areas that were built by veterans from the program—complete with a paved sections, winding paths, flower beds and a bench—were easy to find. In the growing area, several raised beds were prepped and covered for strawberries, which are a tough crop to grow anywhere because many different animals and pests love them. A red Norman Rockwell-looking barn on the property has hosted Veterans to Farmers events.

Jamie Wickler, farm education coordinator at Denver Botanic Gardens, is starting his fourth season teaching the veterans’ course at Chatfield. He said the biggest benefit for participants is a sense of community.

“This is a group that deeply cares about sustainable food production,” Wickler said. “Farming is hard work that they love, so to find other veterans and farmers that share that gives them a lot of encouragement and support.”

Military veterans, accustomed to the rigors of discipline, hard work and getting their hands dirty, are well-suited to agriculture careers.

“They can reconnect to their community in a capacity where it feels like they’re contributing, and that’s huge,” said Murphy. “When you give someone food and get to watch their eyes light up and you grew that. It’s a similar feeling to, ‘you honored our country, thank you for your service.’

Rich Murphy, at left, with a range of past and current participants in the Veterans to Farmers program at his home in Fort Collins, Colorado. (Christopher Carbone/Fox News)

Muranyi recently started working at Hazel Dell Mushrooms Farm in Fort Collins. He helps out at the farmer’s market and spends three days per week assisting with growing and harvesting shitake, lion’s mane and other mushrooms.

“I love the work and it’s given me an opportunity to learn more about fungi,” he said.

O’Brien, who was the first military journalist on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, said she wants to further her own agricultural education, find work in the industry and perhaps homestead on her own farm one day.

“Programs like VTF provide amazing opportunities for veterans to do what they are best at: creating, problem-solving, project managing and leading people in a direction that is holistically best for everyone involved,” she said.

The vets in the program take a survey about topics including mental health at the program’s beginning and end to measure its success, but Murphy said the most powerful feedback he gets is when vets pull him aside at the end to explain why it mattered so much to them.

“If you don’t ever become a farmer, that’s okay. But if you find three or four really good veteran friends and you hang out and talk about plants and maybe grow some tomatoes—that’s f—king awesome. That’s a win,” said Murphy.

Christopher Carbone is a reporter covering global affairs, technology and national news for FoxNews.com. He can be reached at christopher.carbone@foxnews.com or on Twitter @christocarbone.

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